1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to wall bases and flash coves, and is directed in particular to unitary wall bases and flash coves which can be used in sanitary rooms.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Baseboards, baseboard trim or wall bases are known in the art as the molding or trim applied at the base of a wall to act as the transition between wall and the floor. These wall bases decorate as well as protect the wall from scuffing and impact from feet, vacuum cleaners, wheelchairs, dollies, wheeled furniture, etc. Furthermore, the wall bases protect the edge of the carpet or flooring adjacent to the wall, and can cover the edge of the carpet to prevent curling of the carpet edge, give a neater appearance and prevent dirt from going underneath the carpet. Baseboards prevent the accumulation of dirt at the intersection of the wall and the floor—which is usually difficult to clean.
In addition, the wall bases can hide unsightly electrical, telephone or other wires, protecting the wires from damage and preventing people from tripping over these wires or inadvertently touching them, and for preventing young children from playing with the wires.
Wall bases are commonly used where a wall meets a floor to provide a neat and acceptable appearance at the wall-floor juncture. Wall bases are made from a variety of materials, using a variety of methods. These wall bases are preferably all moldings, but wall bases do not have to be moldings—originally they were made out of wood. One commonly used type of molding for wall bases is made from a polymeric material, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that is extruded in one of many well known processes. Extruded PVC molding is typically a cost effective building material that can be provided in an array of colors and styles. Thermoplastic rubber is also a common material for extruded wall bases. Some of these wall bases can be wrapped around inside and outside corners (a corner is the juncture of two transverse walls) of a room. However, there is no cove support in these prior art wall bases which means it can be easily punctured or damaged from an impact. Furthermore, these wall bases lack any type of elongated toe and therefore lack a sufficient surface area to adhere to the floor to take a surface impact.
In the description to follow, the relevant portion of a room is defined as a floor, a floor base or subfloor which meets a wall. The bottom portion or base of a wall is covered with a wall base portion or wall portion. The floor base (which could be concrete or the like) is covered near the wall portion of the wall with a “floor member” or “toe,” which could be a tile, particularly a plastic tile such as a PVC tile. The transition in the corner connecting the wall portion and the floor member is a cove. If the cove is integral with the wall portion and the floor member, the integrated unit is referred to as an “integral wall base and flash cove.”
Wall bases can also be clean room compatible. A clean room is a room in which contaminants such as dust are reduced to a very low level by special procedures so that operations such as the manufacture and assembly of delicate equipment or the manipulation of biological materials can be performed effectively. Such clean rooms can exist, for example, in a hospital environment, a laboratory environment and certain manufacturing facilities such as for making some electronic components, etc., where it is necessary to prevent any dirt, germs, bacteria, etc. from building up between the floor and the walls. Special floor installation processes are used in areas such as hospital operating rooms or clean rooms. Sheet vinyl must be “flash-coved” up a portion of the wall using heat-welded or chemical-welded seams to create a monolithic seamless homogeneous floor and cove on which a heavy flow of water can be applied to the sheet vinyl for cleaning. Using flash coving, the floor curves into the wall base, to provide a smooth curve between the curved portion, the toe and the wall portion (the curved portion is tangent to both the floor and the wall) and eliminates the difficult- to-clean right angle which would otherwise appear at the standard wall and floor junction. Applying flash coving is a special application that requires much skill and practice from the floorlayer.
Flash coving is well known in the art. Flash coving is also considered to be an extension of the conventional wall base, the latter being perpendicular to the floor and extending partly up the wall. In the conventional flash coving process, the first step is to install a cove stick at the juncture of the wall and floor to support the cove material where it coves up the wall (and coves from the wall base to the floor). If there is no support behind the flash coving material (i.e. if there is cove stick), the cove can be punctured or at least partially collapsed in response to pressure or the force of a sharp object applied thereto. The second step of flash coving is to install a top cap moulding or cap strip which serves as the point where the sheet flooring terminates as it extends up the wall. The third step is cutting and installation of the sheet flooring so it abuts against the coving. The sheet flooring is ordinarily a flexible plastic material such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Flash coving at the inside and outside corners (a corner is the juncture of two transverse walls) of a wall requires the use of hand cut pattern inserts known as “butterfly” or “boot” patterns to be cut and carefully fit to the inside or outside corner. These hand cut patterns are necessary to provide the minimum amount of vertical seaming and the best finished appearance. This technique forms smooth transitions at these corners, since the sheet flooring cannot be curved around these corners in one piece. The edges of the sheet flooring have to be cut at an angle so that they form a smooth surface when the pieces of sheet flooring abut each other. The corners are viewed as the most difficult, costly and time-intensive element of any flash coving installation. The work involved with installing flash coving at inside and outside corners of the wall involves costly hand-scribing, wasted time and extra skilled craftsmen skilled at the corner-forming process. Multiple adhesion steps are then done to secure the sheet flooring to the cove stick and the wall. For example, each piece of separate sheeting flooring must be individually glued to the wall and/or the floor, and adjustments in the method are made at each corner to accommodate the numerous variations found in each corner of a room, or an entire building. Thus, eliminating this multiple adhesion process would save time.
Wall bases can also be associated with standard flash coving, where wall bases replace the part of the flooring extending up the wall. In other words, the bottom of the wall portion curves at the base of the wall to the toe. As mentioned above, the wall corner is often viewed as the most difficult, costly and time-intensive portion of any wall base installation involving flash coving. To achieve this type of wall base, a separate molded integral corner piece was needed to make respective outside and inside wall corners as mentioned above, i.e. the wall corner where the respective transverse portions of the wall base would meet. Those skilled in the art will recognize that this type of molding has a variety of drawbacks. First, construction of the wall base is not easy, as separate molded corner pieces are needed to be inserted or cut to make outside and inside wall corners respectively. The separate molded corner pieces must be precisely cut from a single sheet of material with a miter saw or by hand with a utility knife to fit outside or inside corners. Second, only a limited number of wall base design profiles can be achieved by the separate molded corner piece for typical flash coving due to the size of the material and the complexity of the design. These factors limit the mold design and the mold press which is required to manufacture these separate molded corners. A profile is a cross-section of the wall base taken from the top of the wall base to the toe of the wall base. The more complicated the design of the profile, the more difficult it is to make outside and inside corners for the profile. Furthermore and most important, installation of these wall bases is very difficult because of the need to precisely cut the separate molded corner pieces using a miter saw and maintain the continuity of the design. A skilled craftsman is necessary to successfully install a wall base with flash coving. To achieve a clean room or sanitary wall base with this procedure, many seams at the corners of the wall base and the separate molded corner pieces may need to be sealed, either by heat welding or chemical welding. This complicates the installation process and introduces more potential areas where flaws could occur in the seals, thus allowing dirt, germs, bacteria, etc. to build up and remain, hence compromising a clean room environment. There are also variations in material construction that make the seaming method more complex and less reliable. The seaming method must work with the floor material and the flash profile wall base, since the floor material and the wall base often come from two manufacturers using different types of material, and the method may not provide a reliable sanitary seal.
To avoid this skilled labor requirement and consuming installation, flooring manufacturers began producing whole separate molded corner pieces for inside or outside corners. These whole separate molded corner pieces are pre-manufactured by flooring companies and are made ready to install. However, creating these pre-manufactured molded corner pieces simply places the burden of dealing with the complicated corners on the flooring manufacturer rather than the skilled craftsman installing the wall base. Furthermore, these whole separate molded corner pieces still require their seams to be welded.
U.S. Design Pat. No. 424,709 to Minidis discloses an ornamental design for a cove base. Minidis discloses a wall base profile with a curved lower corner. Although not in the claimed design, Minidis shows the supporting structure in hidden lines that would accompany the cove base to install it at the juncture of the wall and floor. Thus, the cove base of Minidis is not self-supported.
U.S. Design Pat. No. 380,280 to Ingraham discloses an ornamental design for a cap. Ingraham shows an angled lower corner.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,092,869 to Stump displays a carpet fastener with contouring surface which is overlaid with carpet, i.e. the carpet fastener supports a carpet at a floor and wall juncture. Stump discloses a gap shown in the floor member part of the fastener for accommodating an insertable plywood tackless carpet strip or fastener. The curved corner section of Stump is very thick compared to the floor member and vertical wall member. Stump has a chamfer or angled portion which allows for clearance between the floor and the wall.
Accordingly, there is a need for a unitary or integral wall base (with a foot member) and flash cove that permits easy manufacture and installation and allows for many variations in design of the unit without the need for a cove stick, and without the labor for installing the cove stick and using the cove stick in the final installation. Desirably, such a unitary wall base and flash cove can be cut with a miter saw to make outside and inside corners without the need for a separate molded corner. Such a system would have fewer seams to weld, and would for example, be compatible in a clean room. The desired unit could reduce the potential number of flaws that could occur at the seams. Most desirably, such a unit would maintain a strong, structurally sound mounting of the molding to the wall and the floor which allows for easy installation. Time saving is particularly important in multiple room facilities where curved wall bases are required such as for apartment buildings, hospitals, hotels, manufacturing facilities, laboratories and the like.